This Once Great Movement Of Ours

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He's like a Labour Theresa May.

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Starmer has a problem. Boris elicits love or hatred. Starmer elicits...nothing. Assuming 'one more heave' with Starmer is dangerous.

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The reality is that he's doing All Right under difficult circumstances. He's not been a smashing success (rare anyway at this stage), he's not been struggling more than is normal for a Leader of the Opposition, and he's certainly not been a catastrophe. And this is surprisingly hard for the great discourse mills to properly process.

There's also no normalcy. Politics (via politicians) are closer than ever to the public from briefings to short term announcement of policy, but more distant because there's a lack of the normal news cycle. You can't be opportunist in those circumstances.

If things resume and Keir is equally as 'meh' then there's a problem.

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So yeah his team is ballsing up his visit to a very anti-LGBT church this weekend.

https://mobile.twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1379035775141023744

[afleitch]

There's also no normalcy. Politics (via politicians) are closer than ever to the public from briefings to short term announcement of policy, but more distant because there's a lack of the normal news cycle. You can't be opportunist in those circumstances.

If things resume and Keir is equally as 'meh' then there's a problem.

It is very noticeable that the ups and downs of polling movement (to the extent that we can trust polling under present circumstances, and I remain as basically sceptical there as I was a year ago) has correlated with (perceived) government struggles and (perceived) government successes to an even greater extent than usual. And it is hard to see how things could be much different, at least in a positive direction: the options are take a hard-line crankish stance on the pandemic or 'well we'd do what the government is doing but better', there's no room to articulate an alternative or to score points in the usual manner. It isn't even really possible to fully exploit things when they go wrong, because you really don't want to get caught crowing during a national crisis!

But this particular climate can't last forever and there will be much adjusting to new circumstances all round when things start to alter.

What's interesting is lockdown skepticism, the sort that you see in the US or even France and Germany has been a bit of a dud here and got far less traction in the high Tory or gutter Tory press as you might have expected simply because 'the lockdown' is Tory policy (had there been a Labour government doing it, I'd have expected something different) and likewise the vaccine rollout as capricious and capitalistic the nuances of acquiring them have been has so far, been a relative success particularly amongst the core Tory voting group of the over 65's.

I know there's going to be a social and economic disaster tomorrow, particularly as the lockdown has exacerbated the sheer void of existence that is being young (and I'm not young) but it's still today. And the canaries are already sniffing budding Orbanism in the government. So Labour have to sit on their hands for now. But hopefully only for now.

It's entirely possible that government support and approval tanks and it's a long slow march to 2024 and with our very politically fluid a complete Tory collapse after 14 years. And Keir is there at the end of it.

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Labour failing to deal with it's 'gender critical' wing; the 'feminism of fools' to bastardise a phrase is starting to cause problems. As someone who's party went through it, (and I almost left) and then in some weird providence had woman's rights champion Alex Salmond create a seperate bin for them, Labour particularly under Starmer have been I think wilfully unwilling to address it. I think there's very little tolerance and good will left in the LGBT wing.

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Who was the last Labour leader (other than Smith, obviously) to not make it to a single general election? Do you have to go back before the War?

George Lansbury. And it is almost certainly going to remain that way as well.

Exactly. This isn't Scottish Labour where it's more surprising if someone does.

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Factionalism in the Labour Party is a lot like factionalism within the clergy of the Church of England: in both cases a big part of the problem is that new recruits are immediately introduced to factional groupings and are usually immediately indoctrinated into one of them (often for reasons that might as well be random) and then they learn everything else about the institution and life in it through the factional grouping they have become attached to. The only difference is that the factional groupings in the CofE do, at least, still map on neatly to actual disputes about fundamental matters: the current roster of Labour Party factions mostly date to the late Cold War and their alignment to each other is entirely from that period. In practice this actually adds to the unpleasantness.

All sides often talk about stuff from the 1980s as if it was last week.

Which is a leftist political and leftist cultural/arts hangover too. The miners strike and poll tax are cultural cows to be milked by boomers who lived it or those who cut their teeth during that time. Who often don't have time for or indeed have disdain for current social and political justice movements.

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What are people's bets on a leadership challenge after Batley & Spen is lost?

Possible I think.

It's clear Starmer is useless as of now. But 'now' is temporary. He could be the right man afterall once the Covid crisis is over.

[afleitch]

The hard left ballsed up tremendously in trying to elevate Batley as make or break for Starmer. Will be interesting to see the fallout.

Oh it's death by a thousand cuts for Starmer. Nothing at all has changed with this result, if nothing changes about Starmer's leadership.

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At this rate they'll get to Rosie Duffield when the sun expands.

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Its pretty much a generic Fabian-type essay, with all the strengths and weaknesses that suggests.

Boris may as well throw on the towel now.

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Is the UK in the middle of a massive energy and supply crisis? from the goings of the Labour conference it doesn't seem so

Party conferences are generally a bit like that tbf. Though this crisis could be set to hit maximum intensity during the Tory gathering next week, which would be grimly amusing.

How many more open goals do you think Starmer will be allowed to miss?

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https://mobile.twitter.com/STVKathryn/status/1442176195022393344

'Labour Friends of Scotland'?

We've not even left yet!

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They tried to undermine him, but with little success - Arthur Scargill formed his own breakaway Socialist Labour Party in a deliberate and woefully unsuccessful attempt to split the vote.

Socialist Labour got more votes in Holyrood in 1999 than the SSP did, but didn't have strength (as Sheridan did in Glasgow) to get anyone elected.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/jessicamordenmp/status/1442556048338997248

Ffs..

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R* D* who couldn't make the conference was this evening on an Irish comedy writers YouTube.

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KEITH STALIN

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Yes, saying "Labour must endorse PR to win power" is all well and good - and I have long supported that, so not going to complain - but they will still have to re-enter government via FPTP first!

I mean, Labour promised to abolish the Lords a century ago and here we are.

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And PR, which was in their 1997 manifesto because they accepted that the centre left were out of power for 18 years because of FPTP. But then they got a landslide because of it. So they then ignored the findings of the Jenkins Comission.

It doesn't bother me if Labour support PR or not because I don't believe they would ever implement it.

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The gender crits daily pile on (the Girl Guides got it yesterday for a tweet about asexuality) is LGBT Labour after an unsubstantiated claim about two men vetting lesbians holding 'gender critical' views.

Anyone asking for evidence is being called a misogynist, because this is where we are now.

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That's nothing, a BBC "journalist" just conflated all trans women with Jimmy Savile on Twitter.

I saw that.

[afleitch]

The gender crits daily pile on (the Girl Guides got it yesterday for a tweet about asexuality) is LGBT Labour after an unsubstantiated claim about two men vetting lesbians holding 'gender critical' views.

Anyone asking for evidence is being called a misogynist, because this is where we are now.

What does asexuality have (allegedly) to do with anything?

Girl Guides posted a tweet in support of asexuality awareness, and that was deemed to be 'sexual' and inappropriate. Despite people pointing out there was nothing inherently sexual about being asexual.

No organisation or charity can post anything remotely about anything LGBTQ+ without a pile-on by GC's in the comments. I created a twitter last month just to use the service (as it's not easy without an account there) for news etc and any few likes or comments that I've made that are trans-inclusive have led to me getting a lot of unwanted messages, accusations that I'm a misogynist and demands to know if I'd sleep with 'man with a vagina.' And I'm a nobody.

Last week, the BBC published an article about lesbians being pressurised into having sex with trans women. This was based on 80 anonymous responses from a two year old 'survey' carried out by an anti-trans Gender Critical group (which goes against the BBC guidelines on relying on survey results.) One of of those interviewed but named included a lesbian sex worker who was accused of sexual assault by a number of other lesbian women who has just posted a number of posts, for want of a better word, calling for acts of violence against trans women (it was actually much much stronger than that).

And the BBC in it's response to complaints (and it was the first ever I've made against the BBC) brushed it off. One of it's own journalists as mentioned above today posted (but has since deleted) the same article again and compared these victims to those of Jimmy Savile.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ContraPoints/status/1455585465147473926

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Starmer on Marr (say that fast) listening to former Labour darling, the actor Brian Cox explain why he shifted from Labour to SNP then completely sh-tting the bed was an uncomfortable watch.

He also ruled out Labour returning to power by refusing to work with the SNP. So good luck with that.

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An amusing amount of rubbish from Mr Tony in the Times today.

Was Kathleen Stock busy today?